Follow us on social

Shame: Afghanistan withdrawal politics miss the point of everything

Shame: Afghanistan withdrawal politics miss the point of everything

Fixating on final moments is preferable to facing the absolute failure of the war

Analysis | Washington Politics

On the three-year anniversary of the last U.S. soldier leaving Afghanistan, and with a presidential election looming, Afghanistan has briefly resurfaced in American discourse.

With a narrow focus on one month out of 238, and 13 deaths out of 2,219 American lives lost in Afghanistan, our leaders will once again miss the point. The spotlight will be on U.S. politics — not Afghanistan, not veterans, not Gold Star families, and certainly not Afghans. The goal is deflection, not reflection.

The harsh reality is that after 20 years our battlefield successes amounted to little. When the Trump administration entered negotiations with the Taliban, both Washington and our longtime Taliban adversaries shared the same goal: America out. President Biden soon decided to follow suit, leading to a haphazardly managed withdrawal—just another chapter in a poorly executed war strategy.

Lawmakers will fixate on the final moments because facing two decades of failure doesn’t suit them.

There are important questions that should be asked in regards to Washington’s failures in Afghanistan. Did we choose the wrong partners at the start? Was our distraction in Iraq fatal? Could we have negotiated with the Taliban sooner, or withdrawn in winter when the Taliban’s conquest of cities would have been harder? What if Bagram air base had been the final exit point, not Kabul? Why did we negotiate with the Taliban, offering them legitimacy and concessions, instead of simply leaving?

Why, after 20 years, did we fail to “know our enemy” or appreciate the intricacies of Afghanistan’s tribes and cultures? More importantly, could we have ever understood?

Some will call it a lost cause from the start — a view I understand, despite its simplicity. Others will misread the lessons to craft new intervention strategies, hoping to change history once again, albeit with better timing and execution.

Conducting after-action reviews of major U.S. military missions is both necessary and a duty. The Afghanistan War Commission and SIGAR are taking this seriously, with their findings available in public reports. Veteran journalists and analysts are also publishing books that tackle the toughest questions of our twenty-year war. However, these reports and books are unlikely to be read by those who cynically exploit our Afghan failures and the blood of U.S. soldiers for their own agendas. Whether these lessons are applied to future conflicts remains to be seen.

Listening to politicians, commentators, and retired generals, one might think the Afghanistan war was a smooth humanitarian mission, with no U.S. deaths until President Trump negotiated a withdrawal and President Biden carried it out. But that’s pure fiction.

Behind it all is a simple truth: Afghanistan was never as important to Americans as it was to the Taliban.

For Afghans and the Afghan diaspora, a bleak reality has set in: no one is coming. It’s the Taliban’s country now. Those Americans who supported staying in Afghanistan indefinitely will argue it has become hell for women — a truth backed by facts — and a hotbed of terrorism — a claim somewhat exaggerated.

They might say that, with more resolve, we could have “won” — a belief detached from reality. Supporters of the withdrawal will claim that, despite losing their freedoms, Afghans are better off with the violence reduced. Both attitudes miss the point entirely. We were never genuine or capable of shaping a future for Afghans.

Remarkably, the United States hasn’t disengaged from Afghanistan. Since August 2021, over $2 billion in humanitarian aid has been provided. While U.S. leaders have rejected the idea of supporting non-state actors to overthrow the Taliban, some Washington think tanks still advocate for it. A dedicated cadre of volunteers and government officials continue to facilitate the evacuation of Afghans who supported the United States.

Meanwhile, efforts have been made, within the limits of U.S. law, to protect Afghan assets and engage diplomatically with the new Taliban leaders. Perhaps Washington policymakers truly have learned from the past.

But with each passing year, Afghanistan will fade in importance, reduced to the status of a landlocked country with dwindling investment and moderate security risks, overshadowed by other global priorities.

Perhaps the harshest indictment of the 20-year war in Afghanistan is how little it will be discussed in the future. Each year, it will be briefly remembered on this day as a failure and then largely forgotten until the next anniversary.


Evacuation operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 28, 2021, in the days following the fall of Kabul to Taliban movement, amid chaos and panic scenes at the capital‚ and airport. Photo by CENTCOM-Balkis Press/ABACAPRESS.COM
Analysis | Washington Politics
Zelensky Putin
Top photo credit: Volodymyr Zelensky (Shutterstock/Pararazza) and Vladimir Putin (Shutterstock/miss.cabul)

No, a ceasefire is not a ‘bad deal’ for Russia

Europe

The Trump administration has so far played its cards in the Ukraine peace process with great skill. Pressure on Kyiv has led the Ukrainian government to abandon its impossible demands and join the U.S. in calling for an unconditional temporary ceasefire.

This call, together with the resumption of U.S. military and intelligence aid to Ukraine, is now putting great pressure on the Russian government to abandon its own impossible demands and seek a genuine and early compromise. A sign of the intensity of this pressure is the anguish it is causing to Russian hardliners, who are demanding that Putin firmly reject the proposal. We must hope that he will not listen to them.

keep readingShow less
Pentagon
Top photo credit: An aerial view of the Pentagon, in Washington, District of Columbia. (TSGT ANGELA STAFFORD, USAF/public domain)

Pentagon gets $6B more in bill designed to avoid government shutdown

QiOSK

The Pentagon got a real boost — $6 billion in fact — in the House Continuing Resolution for the Fiscal Year passed last night to avoid a government shutdown on Friday.

While slashing non-defense spending across federal departments by $13 billion the CR pads the Fiscal Year 2024 defense budget, totaling $892.5 billion. If passed, the CR would fund federal agencies through September.

keep readingShow less
DOGE can help close empty, useless military bases across US
Top photo credit: George Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base located about 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California. The facility was closed by the Base Realignment and Closure (or BRAC) 1992 commission at the end of the Cold War. It is now the site of Southern California Logistics Airport and a National Guard drone training facility. (Flickr/Creative Commons/slworking2)

DOGE can help close empty, useless military bases across US

Military Industrial Complex

In his search for saving taxpayers’ money, President Trump recently directed Elon Musk and the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to take a closer look at the Pentagon. And their search is apparently already paying off.

“They’re finding massive amounts of fraud, abuse, waste, all of these things,” Trump declared.

keep readingShow less

Trump transition

Latest

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.